In this paper, a hybrid meta-heuristic algorithm, based on imperialistic competition algorithm (ICA), harmony search (HS), and simulated annealing (SA) is presented. The body of the proposed hybrid algorithm is based on ICA. The proposed hybrid algorithm inherits the advantages of the process of harmony creation in HS algorithm to improve the exploitation phase of the ICA algorithm. In addition, the proposed hybrid algorithm uses SA to make a balance between exploration and exploitation phases. The proposed hybrid algorithm is compared with several metaheuristic methods, including genetic algorithm (GA), HS, and ICA on several well-known benchmark instances. The comprehensive experiments and statistical analysis on standard benchmark functions certify the superiority of the proposed method over the other algorithms. The efficacy of the proposed hybrid algorithm is promising and can be used in several real-life engineering and management problems.

In this paper a class of cellular automata rules is defined and proposed to be used in CA randomizers. The quality of the proposed rules is shown by study of symmetric rules of radius one and two. In addition, a non-uniform CA randomizer is constructed with the proposed symmetric rules of radius two. The high quality of the generated random numbers are shown by a battery of statistical tests. Moreover, it is shown that the proposed CA randomizer is more secure against cryptanalysis attacks.

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